Trump's obsession with the UCLA players continues, thanks to the father of one of the players, and of course, Trump's inability to walk away from a petty argument.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultu ... itter-rageThis minor international incident might have ended there, another in a long line of Presidents helping Americans get out of tight legal spots in autocratic foreign countries. Yet when LaVar Ball was asked by ESPN about Trump’s involvement in the case, Ball pretended not to have heard of him. “Who?” he asked, before adding, “What was he over there for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.” Trump caught wind of this and responded in a series of angry tweets, writing, at one point, “I should have left them in jail!” On Monday, LaVar Ball went on CNN to keep up his end of this affair, again refusing to thank the President, referring to himself in the third person, and taking the opportunity to promote his clothing brand: “Tell Donald Trump to have a great Thanksgiving because Big Baller is.”
It’s hard, in this spat, to pick a hero. Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, who has emerged in these odd times as a national voice of reason, blamed the media for giving both men the kind of exposure they crave (sorry, Coach) and added, “It would be nice . . . if both of them would just be quiet. Wouldn’t that be great?” Nice, perhaps, but, after Trump’s tweets on Wednesday, not to be. Unlike many of the other personal feuds that Trump has stoked from the Oval Office, his interlocutor this time has no personal or practical reasons to back down—especially now that he has been addressed with the racially coded word “ungrateful,” often applied to black athletes who speak up. For this feud to end, it will likely fall on Trump to do something uncharacteristic: letting the other guy have the last word.
It is not hard to not pick a hero when there isn't one. To figure-out who is the bigger douchebag, simply ponder which of the two is the President of the United States.
As unsettling as it was to see an American President’s psychological motivations so deftly evaluated by a famously erratic despot, it was equally, though less gravely, startling to notice that, between Trump and LaVar Ball, it was Ball who seemed closer to reason. On Monday night, on CNN, Ball said, “Let him do his political affairs and let me handle my son, and let’s just stay in our lane.” Here, finally, LaVar Ball proved himself naïve. For Trump, “political affairs” are indistinguishable from his own personal grievances. He has obliterated the very notion of lanes.
The despot in question is Kim Jong-Un.
I can boil-down the gist of this New Yorker article fairly easily. Trump is the troll in-chief. This LaVar Ball guy is also a rather accomplished troll. They are both attention hogs. By pursuing this feud (ugh - so pop culture) in the media, they are both getting what they crave. The difference is one debases the people he serves and the office he holds, while the other is some guy who runs a sporting goods outfit, of whom most of the world did not know existed until Trump elevated him by being an even BIGGER asshole.
A quantum state of signature may or may not be here... you just ruined it.